Katherine Brown

Originally from Phoenix, Arizona, Katie Brown (she/her) is graduating from NYU in May of 2025 with degrees in Performance Studies and Public Policy. She is passionate about music, arts leadership, law, and understanding the performance of identity within policy and governmental spaces.

Description of Capstone Project

Queer Legal Theories is the model for a class within the Performance Studies curriculum that examines questions about queer theory, queer ephemera in legal spaces, and advancing the struggle for queer rights through institutional means. The syllabus invokes specific legal cases regarding LGBTQ+ legal rights and performance artifacts while building on a body of inquiry from theorists such as Michael Foucault, Eve Sedgwick, José Muñoz, Cathy Cohen, and bell hooks. Through the course, students will examine performative utterance, space, and time as they relate to queerness and queer legality. The project culminates in a final paper thinking through the tension between the disidentificatory relationship between modern “Don’t Say Gay” laws and the practice of being or saying gay in a majoritarian space.

What Inspired Your Project?

This project is inspired by the syllabi of the Performance Studies professors that have worked hard to create students with diverse perspectives and meaningful understandings of the world.